Amazon Books, the store

Amazon made a foray into the brick and mortar world by opening their first physical bookstore in Seattle. It's in the upscale University Village, less than a half hour away from their South Lake Union headquarters. While there seems to be quite a lot of interest around the store, there doesn't seem to be the large crowd of people you might expect.

For a brick and mortar store, there's certainly a lot of both materials. Inside and out, there's a lot of brick and glass along the walls.

The day the store opened, Melody walked by in the afternoon and said there wasn't anyone waiting to go in. In the early evening, however, there was a short line of people waiting for entry. When I went a couple days later, however, there were several people in there, but not a lot. The density was less than what I used to see at Barnes & Noble when it used to be in U Village.

Just like on the web site, star ratings are an important factor in the store. It will be interesting to see how often the labels beneath each book are changed; you need to scan either the label o r the book to find the price, since that's not on the label. A side-effect of having a label under every book is all the books have the covers facing out, not the spines.

There are some seats located near the windows, and Fire tables are provided for use. There are also other Amazon products out for trying, such as the Fire TV devices and an Amazon Echo (one guy was trying to get the Echo to change the volume of the stream it was playing, but after a few tries he just did it by hand).

While all the books for sale have the covers facing out, shelves above the displays are filled with random books (which is why you see Rick Steves and Oliver Sacks near each near the “Cooking” sign.

One thing that struck me was it didn't smell like a new store (carpet, cut wood, etc.) Paper was the predominant scent, as it should be.